Interoperable Identities
The Imperative of Decentralized Identity
Sybil Resistance and Beyond
While I admire the ambition to decentralize and the tech involved in Worldcoin, I don’t imagine handing over my biometrics to a non-governmental centralized entity. However, as more of our lives go digital, the need for more effective solutions for proof of personhood is an Achilles heel. In addition to the legal right to the Internet and safe borderless programmable money, the future of digital public goods critically depends on self-sovereign identity.
The problem
When the cost of forging our identities is lower, our systems become fragile — from trivial but annoying experiences with social network bots to misappropriating resources that rely on digital identity for distribution. For a Sybil-resistant human identification, a system needs to ensure that every identity within their domain is i) unique so that no two people should have the same identifier and ii) singular so that one person should not be able to obtain more than one identifier.
The trilemma
Different protocols aim to achieve Sybil resistance while also maintaining self-sovereignty (anybody can create and control an identity without the involvement of a centralized third party) and being privacy-preserving (one can acquire and utilize an identifier without revealing identifying information in the process). Those three requirements, Sybil resistance, self-sovereignty, and privacy-preservation, compose the “Decentralized Identity Trilemma” (For a deeper dive, check the paper, “Who Watches the Watchmen?” By Divya S, Sergey I, Santiago S, Paula B). No system is 100% Sybil resistant. In the essay Collusion, Vitalik asserts “…something secure enough, for at least some use cases” is vital for designing a decentralized identity.
The pathway
The need for decentralized identity stems from political considerations rather than technical ones. Notwithstanding which political party is in power, when the regulatory checks and balances are non-existent, disenfranchising someone when identity is centralized can devolve to the push of a button. Besides, each of us plays diverse personas in our offline and online worlds — our identity comes with multiple facets. Shouldn’t so be the solution to defend it? The future of digital proof-of-personhood is in plural interoperable context-sensitive solutions versus a monolith vulnerable as a single point of failure.
A desirable future — portable reputation
Anti-fragile systems get stronger when stressed. When identity solutions become interoperable and able to handle the diverse needs of who we are, the next leap is portable reputation. In that world, the reputation we build from the work we do in the context of one realm is easily transferable to another (e.g., your expertise as a local community builder seamlessly transfers to eligibility for an online grant). Digitally verifiable reputation and attestations are the door to building resilient self-governing systems of the future.
